Wednesday, 9 June 2010

Cort-ma Law Hill Race

This evening I ran the Cort-ma Law Hill Race for the 9th year in a row. Conditions underfoot were fairly slow and soggy.

The race was won by Kenny Richmond for the 3rd year a row. Garry Rankin of Kilbarchan was 2nd, and Dave Eiser of Ochils finished 3rd, just ahead of Westies own Adam Gatens in 4th place.

In the ladies race, Claire Gordon started like she had a bus to catch, and had disappeared out of sight by the time I reached Cort-ma Law summit. I battled along switching places with Deeside's Emma O'Shea for most of the race.

Between Cort-ma Law and Lecket, I dropped 2 places as Stuart Simpson and Russell Anderson went past. Then towards the bottom of the gulley, Gary Fraser of Ochils nipped past with a stronger descent.

I was feeling pretty jaded at midge-hell gulley, where I got a shout from Munro legend Charlie Campbell, and was expecting to lose a bunch more places before the end, but gritted in and caught up Gary Fraser again, but didn't go past properly and allowed Gary to regain the initiative and fire on ahead.

After the final fence crossing, marshalled by Fiona Hutch, I was a bit lazy and just sat behind Gary rather than making more of a final effort. This allowed Emma to catch up again, and together we were gaining on Claire Gordon on the final descent. I was fairly sure we would catch Claire anyhow, but I shouted on Emma to make a final effort, that I wasn't interested in matching, but it was still enough to take us past Owen O'Neill, who was flagging towards the end.

My time was 57:19, which is 15 seconds faster than my Personal Worst for the course of 57:34, set in 2005. So thankfully this stops my 6-month sequence of PWs in every race!